Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

Well, you may have noticed I have added a banner link to my “molto buono” category. This was a link I found off a random blog that I found while searching for something innocuous online. Notice how I’m using the “big words” here too - the new link brings you to an organization that donates rice to poverty-stricken areas while testing your vocabulary! It’s a “good way” to waste time. Enjoy in your free time.

Update 6/5/08: While reading this month’s (June 2008) issue of Reader’s Digest, I noticed freerice.com is mentioned on page 23 (go have a look for yourself on the bottom left corner of the page!).

So I have to apologize a bit for the delay in posting about both Val’s shower and Ray & Donel’s wedding. As soon as I got back from that trip to NJ, I’ve been working like crazy to get new data for my thesis, and more specifically, for my departmental student presentation and annual thesis committee meeting. After being really sick, and yet dragging myself into the lab for an entire weekend to get those last few bits of precious data analyzed (where my advisor saw me in the lab and knew I was sick), I spent a week basically 9-5 over at our stem cell core lab taking the UCI Stem Cell Techniques Course. Before I went home every night I would spend an hour or two in my lab either gathering data, setting up one more plate of samples to be run, or getting tables and graphs ready for my slides. I should have known things would be going downhill when I unwittingly lost about 3/4 of my presentation the middle of last week. See, I’d been going back and forth to the lab so often, I’d just been working on the copy of my presentation on my USB drive, instead of saving a local copy and working on that. So last week when I was just making one small change, I had the memory stick was plugged into Kris’s computer, which is networked in-house to my computer. His computer crashed, and somehow, when he rebooted and I “saved” my slides, only the first 15 or so actually got saved. Crap…

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The rest of Saturday was of course wrapped up in what Kris and I had originally been planning to come to NJ for this weekend - Ray and Donel’s wedding! Of course we had a great time, and both of us, my family, and everyone else I know are so happy for them! They make a great couple. Anyway, for the time being I have posted the pictures from my camera, Kris’s, and my parents in my gallery here (I hope to get a few more of the higher-resolution digital pictures of “us” from Ray soon).

Ok, so as I mentioned below, after Valerie’s bridal shower, Kris, myself, and my mom headed back to my parents’ house to get ready for Ray and Donel’s wedding. It was a big rush to get clothes ironed (I had to turn my skirt inside-out, and Kris’s clothes were super-wrinkled from the trip in the suitcase), but in all honesty it didn’t take all that long to get ready. We headed out just in time, as we heard later that there was a big accident on the parkway which prevented a lot of the wedding guests from arriving in time for the ceremony. Well, it also didn’t take that long to get to the Victorian Manor (my dad already knew how to get there from when we’d visited it to check out as a reception site for my and Kris’s wedding last year), so we arrived in plenty of time for the ceremony. (more…)

Today was the culmination of months of planning between myself, Val’s bridesmaids, and moms for her bridal shower. It was no surprise to Val, who knew what day it would be because it was a day both she and I would be in NJ for Ray’s wedding. Everything went smoothly from the setting up (great table and food arrangements compliments of Val’s friend Rebecca) and decorating (fun decorations provided by Bill’s sisters Margeaux and Julie and his mom) to the games (which were my responsibility). The food was awesome (thanks to Linda, Val’s mom), as was the cake, which was decorated like invitation (which my hubby Kris did the design for), and Marisa put together these awesomely cute favors - little beach bags filled with summer-y colored M&M’s, with a blue ribbon as the handle, which says “Valerie’s Shower April 5th, 2008.” I have a few picture posted from the party in my gallery.

As everyone helped finish setting up, the guests arrived. Soon after, Valerie herself arrived, and gave a great mock surprise expression for some pictures. Since she was out picking up her wedding gown, she was able to show it to all of us right then and there. I must say, it’s simple, yet elegant, and certainly a “Val style.” I can’t wait to see what it’s going to look like on her! Just after I was able to announce the winner of the first game, which was a guestbook sign-in including anniversary date, and my mom won by having the closest wedding date to Valerie and Bill. We made sure everyone had clothespins so we could start playing the “Don’t say the word Wedding” game, and I must say everyone was pretty careful about not saying it right away, but as the party advanced more and more of us slipped up!

Well, the next game we played right away was “Bridal Bingo,” or our version of it which we entitled “Beach Blanket Bridal Bingo.” This isn’t a game that’s easy to find a description on, but is one of my favorites. The game is used as an icebreaker, and what you have is a card with 5×5 squares with different criteria in them, and you have to find another guest that matches that criteria. I tried to make the criteria Val and Bill specific, and when I needed help with coming up with some of those criteria, Marisa had some great suggestions (thanks again, Marisa!). I knew some of the criteria would be hard to fill (”Has been to a roller derby”), but I think because the party was small, it was extra difficult to get a row, column, or diagonal filled when we only allowed one guest to sign each criteria. We still had a great time getting to know one another trying to fill in our squares! Val’s stepsister Amy won this game, and afterwards everyone got some yummy food and chatted about the upcoming nuptials. Marisa, the proud mom-to-be, also shared her recent ultrasound pictures with us. I couldn’t believe how many she had - it was like a whole roll of film of pre-natal photos - and you could really see a lot of body details: an arm, a leg, hands, and the sexing photo to show they’re expecting a boy.

The next round of games shooed Valerie into a room we couldn’t see her, and while the rest of the guests played a memory game, Val herself was filling in a questionnaire for “The Newlywed Game,” which Rebecca and I had conspired earlier with Bill to get the answers Val would try to match. One everyone (including Valerie) was done, she came back into the room so we could see what she was wearing. I actually had the most correct answers, but only because I made a guess at what kind of undergarments she was wearing. Woo-hoo! After I received my prize, Valerie sat down and answered the Newlywed Game questions aloud to see how many answers matched Bill’s, which I read aloud. Since Val was already seated in the designated bridal chair, we proceeded to the gift opening. Margeux and Julie handled passing the gifts to Valerie to make things easier, while Marisa recorded which gifts were from which guests (for ease of thank you card writing later), Rebecca worked on the bow hat/bouquet, and I recorded the funny things Valerie said while opening her gifts - the “wedding night/honeymoon preview.” We took lots of picture and had quite a few laughs, and then everyone enjoyed the cake and various other desserts. I had collected quite a few clothespins by this point, but since I had already won a prize, I purposely said “wedding” thereby pretty much giving my clothespins away.

Once the party drew to a close, Valerie’s cousin Elaine had collected the most clothespins. She was pretty excited, which was very cool. Since Rebecca had brought one more prize that she really wanted to give away, we came to the conclusion that Valerie should decide how that should be done. Her thought was to give the prize to the person who had the anniversary or birthday closest to her and Bill’s real anniversary, which is in December. This person turned out to be Marisa, so that was pretty cool.

After the party was over, we rounded up the men (Bill, his stepdad Tim, his brother Johnathan, Rebecca’s boyfriend Guillaume, and Kris who had spent the time during the party bowling and chowing down at a local diner), and Kris, myself, and my mom headed home to get ready for Ray and Donel’s wedding!

This past weekend started out a little lazy, as I have been sick for a week since the Desert Storm Rally last weekend. But lately Kris and I have been obsessed with playing both Guitar Hero and Rockband. So let me back up a little here…in December, Kris and I were trying to decide whether we wanted to jump in on the GH/Rockband craze - we are admittedly always a little “behind” when it come to this stuff. Well, we hadn’t actually played either game, but I knew my friend Renee’s daughters Lyndsey and Anneli (at the time) had GH 1, 2, 3, and Rocks the 80’s. Since there’s two of them, they also had two guitars. We asked if we could borrow it since we both have Playstation 2, and they graciously let us borrow whatever we wanted - we ended up with their two guitars and GH 1 and 2. They ALSO gave us Singstar and the two microphones they had. So we played Guitar Hero 1 for a week non-stop. We brought one of the guitars to a Christmas cookie-baking party. We couldn’t get enough and finally decided - this is something we have to have. Once Christmas morning arrived, there was a a guitar and game waiting for us under our tree - a wonderful present from the Marciniak side of our family!

Once our friends got back from their Christmas trip to see family in Utah, we were able to give them their games and controllers back. We’ve been playing GH2 on and off when we have time since then. We knew about Rockband the whole time, and certainly wanted to check it out if given the opportunity. Our friends Diane & Eddie had been telling us that they had just bought Rockband back in February, and after our trip out to the Seed 9 Rally (to help them as service crew) we were invited to stay and play Rockband for the very first time! Again, we were hooked. And, a couple weeks ago, Kris and I were able to borrow Rockband ourselves from Lyndsey and Anneli. We had Eddie & Diane and Erik & Amy over for dinner and all played together, then our friend Karen, Vince, and Mick for game night. Unfortunately for us, we only have a PS2 while Eddie & Diane have a PS3 - which has way more interactive features and downloadable content, as well as online gameplay. The huge bummer for this is that the PS2 has all those capabilities too, the game designers just decided to take those features out of the PS2 version for whatever reason.

Ok, so back to Easter weekend. Saturday was a lazy day, both of us relaxing and me especially just trying to get over the cold I’d had for the entire week. We eventually got ready to go out to a murder mystery dinner show, which my parents had bought me tickets to as a birthday present. The show was near the airport in Irvine, so we didn’t have to go very far and actually arrived a bit early. We got to enjoy sitting by the hotel’s pool in a private cabana. Eventually we saw the doors open and went over to go inside. We were told to make up a name and a background story to go with it. We decided to do something fun, and since Kris has been told he looks like Matt Damon, he chose the name Jason Bourne. His background story was that he was a professional race car driver - not too much of a stretch to the imagination! My chosen name was Beth Bourne - since we ARE married after all - and my background was that I was a librarian. Also not too much of a stretch for me to falsify! Once inside, we got some drinks, then were told to mingle and suspect anyone wearing a name tag, question everyone! Not too soon after, we were ushered into the dining area, and were seated. We immediately suspected this one woman at our table, who we realized was alone. Her nametag read “Twin Peaks.” She said she was there because her friend told her about it and that she was an actress. She kept asking us if anyone at our table had been to one of these shows before or knew anything about this one, like how long it was supposed to be or whatever. I definitely thought it was suspicious that “her friend” wouldn’t give her any details or that she herself wouldn’t have tried to look up any info before coming to a show that she was supposedly checking out for an acting gig. At one point she became “part of the action,” and she “wanted to do a reading for an upcoming audition.” Her mistake was saying that audition was THAT night, and her big mistake is that she was a really bad actress. She also mentioned that she wanted to talk to someone who was a director, and I was thinking, um, I don’t think that guy is a director in real life. During dessert they gave us about five minutes to actually write down what we’d thought had happened. Kris and I really had no clue, although we make a bunch of connections between the clues - many more than the rest of our table did. It turned out only one person knew who it was, AND had a really good explanation, so she got some gifts. I was bummed that I couldn’t figure it out, but we still both had a really good time. And I have to say, I like this a lot more than the other two shows like it I’ve gone to in the past. One of these was Shear Madness, which was a lot of fun in it’s own right, though it was more of a show with some slight audience participation - and the ending of the show and killer was determined BY the audience. The other show was good too, and lots of fun because it was part of my family’s last trip to Walt Disney World.

On Sunday, we went over to Eddie & Diane’s place in Long Beach, where we’d been invited for Easter dinner. It was so nice to not have to cook again after being sick the whole week, and to spend a holiday with friends - who are Italian to boot! Diane had prepared and cooked a three course meal! We started with salad, bread, lasagna, pepperoni, and meatballs. It was so good we had to hold off on the next course of grilled asparagus, lamb tips, carrots, ham, and mashed potatoes. So in the meantime we played a bit of Rockband on their PS3! It was really cool to see all the differences - we continued a previous game and acquired the tourbus in a very short time - something you don’t get to do in the PS2 version we’d mostly been playing. Kris mostly played the guitar, and occasionally played the drums; I would have done some singing but my voice was gone due to my cold and sore throat, so the only song I could “sing” was Epic, and I instead took a few turns with the guitar myself. I think because Kris and I played Guitar Hero that we’re a lot better with the guitar and bass than anyone else we’ve played with, but it usually works out because Eddie wants to play the drums and Diane only sings. Anyway, we got through a bunch of sets and eventually got to play at what is essentially Madison Square Garden in NYC. We played the very first set of something like 5 songs there, and saw the second session would have been 18 songs - needless to say, late in the night, with only 4 people, one of whom does not have a voice, we decided to hold off on that one. Well, we had our second course of dinner, had chocolate torte, tea, and coffee for dessert, played a bit more Rockband and headed home. All in all it was an excellent weekend, despite still having a cold!

Yup - today was my birthday! Kris and I stayed up late to celebrate the official start of my birthday at just after 1 AM on Saturday morning. We slept in a little late afterwards, but then, as promised, Kris made me breakfast in bed. He was planning on making it all special, with pancakes and omlettes and meats and juice, but neither one of us remembered that the last egg we had in the house we had used to make dinner the other night along with the sausage we had in the refrigerator….so it ended up being just pancakes and juice - but it was still really special! Kris brought everything necessary upstairs and on his final trip he revealed the last special mini-chocolate chip-studded heart pancake (that I wanted a lasting memory of)! (And it was kind funny because if you flipped it over it looked like the Mouse!)

Afterwards, we got to a task which has been hanging over for us for a while - picking which of our formal pictures that we wanted prints of. It was a hard decision to make, especially because we had offered to let each set of parents have their choice of 30-35 prints apiece as well. Happily, Kris and I both had a good idea of what kinds of pictures we each wanted, so it was just a matter of going through a few of that “type” of picture and choosing the best one. It turned out that quite a few times both sets of parents had chosen the exact same print, and a bunch of times that there was a print all three of us wanted. I am so happy to say that we picked out and were able to order every picture that we desired!

While placing the photo order, we inquired with some of the local HAM radio acquaintances about the best Italian eateries in the area. I remembered (too late!) that the *best* Italian food I’ve ever eaten was up in Sky Forest at Cucina Cielo, where we had dinner during our mini-break just after we’d gotten engaged -but clearly this was a place that would have been too far to go to just for dinner. Instead, we got some great reviews for Bistango in Irvine, and Pepino’s in Mission Viejo. I opted for Pepino’s because Bistango looked a bit *too* pricey, and it also looked like Pepino’s had an awesome martini bar!

So it was off to dinner at Pepino’s. We both ordered Veal Parmesan, our favorite dish. I ordered an Italian Expresso Martini, which was a tasty, almost dessert drink. We were so full from dinner that we couldn’t even think about dessert, so I’m glad I got that martini! Afterwards, we went home and enjoyed some TiVo’d shows we’d been meaning to watch, and ended the day by setting all the clocks forward. It was very strange to have to do that on my birthday; I guess it is something I’m going to have to get used to with the new daylight savings hours. I lost an hour of my birthday, but I don’t mind - I’d rather have the extra hours of daylight at night!

Charlotte shared the happy news about her whirlwind romance and their decision to get married when she returned from a trip to Montana in January. Initially, I was unsure that I would be able to attend, but then my rally friends, Diane and Erik (and their respective spouses) offered up their frequent flyer miles in exchange for us helping them as crew at the Seed 9 rally. I am so grateful to the four of that and making it possible for me to attend my co-worker & friend’s special day.

I flew out to Las Vegas from LAX on Sunday, with a bit of a delay on the runway from the wind in Vegas. I didn’t know until I landed that I’d still arrived before Charlotte, her fiance` Jeffrey, and her sister Sarah, who had driven Charlotte’s car, with trailer attached, from SoCal. The winds made their drive to Vegas more difficult (because they were towing a box trailer from U-Haul), but they did eventually arrive in time for dinner. Instead of picking me up from the airport, Charlotte had arranged for her friends James and Joe to pick me up, so they were already there waiting for me with Tuyen - another co-worker of mine who had left herself to attend graduate school in Boston.

A quick trip to the hotel and soon after Charlotte, Jeffrey, and Sarah arrived. They checked into their hotel room, and one they’d reserved for friends to share, even though it ended up being “the girls’ room.” We all got settled in, and ready for the “rehearsal” dinner. Just before we left, Sarah, Tuyen, and I gave Charlotte some gifts to use as her “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” Sarah brought Charlotte the earrings she’d worn at her own wedding, as well as a garter, a silver pin (that Charlotte put on the garter), and a hankie from their grandmother that had lacy blue trim - which their great-aunt had hand-crocheted. Tuyen had some blue & silver hair jewelry, and I gave Charlotte my veil to borrow.

We set out for dinner at Landry’s, and had a wonderful time. James, Joe, and Tuyen decided they wanted to enjoy a night on the town in Vegas, so they went off to the strip while the rest of us went back to the hotel. Sarah and I started talking and completely lost track of ourselves - we just had so much in common that we couldn’t stop! I think we finally fell asleep around 2 AM. We woke up around 8 AM to start getting ready for the wedding - as Charlotte and Jeffrey went down to the chapel to make arrangements and then went off to the courthouse to obtain their marriage license.

When Charlotte and Jeffrey returned, it was a quarter of 10, and their wedding ceremony was supposed to be at 10 AM! They called the chapel to delay it - as Charlotte would not have had enough time to get ready. Then the curling iron was plugged in, and clothes were flying everywhere as the three girls helped Charlotte put on her makeup, do her hair, and get dressed. We were finally ready to go, and then headed over to the chapel. Last minute arrangements were made re: music, and then it was ceremony time! James walked Charlotte down the aisle as Sarah got their mom on the phone. Jeffrey and Charlotte recited their vows together - which made Sarah and I both cry! They had the longest wedding kiss I’ve ever witnessed, and then it was picture time! I directed several photos of poses I really like from Kris and my wedding, so I hope they came out nice!

Click here for my pictures from the dinner and wedding!
I will post a link once Charlotte & Jeffrey make their wedding page.

After the pictures, we made a quick stop back at the hotel to pick up my luggage before we headed over to the Bellagio for a buffet lunch. Unfortunately, I had to rush to leave to make my flight (which I almost did not!), but before I did, I made the happy couple pose for a few more “classic” pictures - a toast, and the toast while kissing! The food at the Bellagio was excellent, and the next time I’m in Las Vegas, I will be sure to go there for the buffet! Final thoughts: Charlotte and Jeffrey made an adorable couple, and I’m so happy for them both!

As I think I’ve mentioned something along these lines in previous posts, but 2007-2009 seem to be the “wedding years” for us. In 2007, we attended weddings of our friends that got married in February (Mary and Frank), May (Sabrina and Andrew), and November (Vanessa and Brian) - not to mention our own wedding our own wedding in August, and two other sets of friends that got married in March (Amy and Erik) and August (Amy and Steve). This year, we have weddings to attend in April (Ray and Donel), July (Valerie and Bill), and October (my cousin Jerilyn and Dave), and we already have weddings in June (Samantha and Davis) and July (Gwynn and Mark) of 2009 that I already know of. All this before my co-worker and friend Charlotte, with her fiance` Jeffrey, decided to elope this coming Monday, March 3rd, in Las Vegas! So we have and will be doing a lot of traveling and partying.

This year I’m much more involved. I’m already a bridesmaid in my cousin’s wedding in October, and I’ve been asked to be part of another friend’s wedding as well. I’ll be helping plan and attending bridal showers for Valerie (in April to coincide with when we’ll both be in NJ) and for Jerilyn (which will be in July when I’ll be in town again). I’ve already got outfits planned for all three weddings this year, and I just placed my order for my bridesmaid’s dress for Jerilyn’s wedding. I’m really excited because it looks like a really cute dress that I’ll be able to wear again - perhaps even to one of the weddings in 2009! (These pictures are all of the same dress she has chosen for us to wear, just different views. And the one that’s not black is the closest color I could find that would match the description of “cranberry.”)

I also found out that two people I know are pregnant and expecting their first child in August of this year (Marisa and Amanda). I want to wish everyone who’s planning their weddings and pregnant the best of luck with everything along the way. I’ll see you all soon!

Kris has had a homebrew kit he’d received as a gift almost two years ago, and we’d been trying to figure out the best time to get it started. With the downpour rain and cold that came on Friday, he finally decided it was time.

Earlier in the week, I’d started a sourdough bread starter, so it was also time to take some out and bake a loaf in our breadmaker. We always love making bread, and since it was raining, it was a really great day to make a loaf. So I got all the ingredients together in the breadmaker’s loaf pan while Kris started sanitizing the kitchen and organizing all the things he would need to start the homebrew.

The process is fairly simple - crush some grains, steep them in a big pot of water, remove and add the malt, add hops and boil for 30 minutes to an hour. I keep trying to make it into a scientific process - exact measurements and temperatures, which is the way I usually cook - but it’s more of an art and a “whatever” laidback process, which is certainly more along Kris’s terms. Every time I get panicked about how long it’s been, or what temperature the wort is at Kris has to remind me of the homebrewing motto - Relax, have a homebrew!

Jason joined us for an “inside look” at the homebrew process, and we were able to share some fresh-baked sourdough bread with him. Finally, it was time to strain out the hops and dilute the wort to a total of 5 gallons and lower the temperature. Unfortunately, our cold water isn’t really cold from the tap, and we don’t really have room in the fridge for either the giant tub OR pitchers with enough water…so when Kris got to this step, the temperature didn’t drop as much as it needed to. So we brought the whole thing outside. It took a while, but eventually the temperature decreased enough and we brought it back inside for the start of primary fermentation. (Eventually we had to bring it back outside because it just wasn’t cool enough inside…)

Another part of the weekend was making some homemade vanilla extract! Kris had been searching Make Instructables, and came across this great one for DIY Vanilla Extract. It’s quite easy - all you need is a dark bottle, some vodka, and a few vanilla beans. We actually have a whole bunch of vanilla beans that we got on our honeymoon - a gift from the hotel - and since we’d changed rooms we got twice as much. We’d been wondering what the heck to do with the vanilla, even while on our honeymoon because it was presented as a “specialty item” to buy and bring home. I wonder what most other people do with the vanilla beans since it’s so expensive… Those thoughts aside, Kris also showed me that once you strain out the vanilla bean and pods, you can use them to make vanilla sugar, ala Alton Brown.

I was super excited when Kris showed me the instructable thing, because not only was it something to DO with the vanilla beans, but then we’d have homemade vanilla extract AND vanilla-flavored sugar made with vanilla from our honeymoon. The fact that these things will be homemade and reminders of our honeymoon in years to come make the whole thing extra special.

Christmas this year was very weird. As it was the very first Christmas I haven’t spent with my family, it was understandably a bit disappointing - but it’s not like I haven’t seen them all year. With the wedding stuff (mostly ours) from 2007 and more coming in 2008, we’ll be traveling to the East Coast more than we have since we moved out here! But back to Christmas…it was happily our first married Christmas, and as with most things in this first year of marriage we’ll be looking to perhaps make some of our own new traditions.

Let me back up a little…About a week before Christmas, I came home to find the room divider up in the living room (we usually use it to separate the “dining” area from the rest of the living room, but it hadn’t been up for a while after Thanksgiving), so I was a little curious as to what might be hiding behind it, especially since all the lights were out and I could see a glowing behind it. Kris had bought a tiny 2-foot tree, green and red tinsel, and a small string of lights, and had it set up for my arrival home from the lab! It was so sweet, even though I didn’t really want to get a tree and start accumulating the million holiday decorations yet - since we’re living in a small place without a lot of excess storage space and we don’t have room for all sorts of tchotchkes. Of course I still loved the tree and Kris’s effort to make our holiday more homey.

In the meantime, packages had started arriving. There were two big boxes from Tupperware (presumably the remainder of our Tupperware registry, but pre-Christmas I had no idea what might be coming from or where). We received another package from my Aunt Linda with some cute Christmas decorations, which we placed around to put ourselves in the holiday spirit. My mom had sent two packages - one full of tins of Christmas cookies and presents, and a second which she told us to open right away. It contained two small candy cane ornaments with our names on them, which fit perfectly on our little tree. I also received a package which I had forgotten was coming - the preserved flowers from my wedding bouquet! It turned out so lovely, the colors are darkened, but still beautiful. I’m so glad I found a company to do what I wanted (in case you’re wondering, I went through Keepsake Floral - they’re located in Florida, but you can ship your flowers there from anywhere, and they have all the pricing and everything right there on the website - it’s not hidden like with other companies). What a nice Christmastime surprise!

More packages - a huge box from Kris’s family - and Christmas cards arrived in the following days. We started wrapping presents for each other, and soon there was a pile of festive presents waiting under our Christmas tree on the table. We made some last-minute plans to have our neighbor/couplefriends Jason and Andrea over for dinner on Christmas, and our own plans for Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, we prepared a traditional dish of pasta fagioli and enjoyed some holiday tv specials before getting ready for church. We decided to go to the 6pm mass on Christmas Eve at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the church we had done Pre-Cana through. The church itself was decorated really nicely for the holiday, and mass was the same as it usually is on Christmas Eve, except they did the readings for the Christmas Vigil (Mass at Midnight), which was weird because it was only 6pm and they had another mass scheduled for midnight. There was a band and choir who provided wonderful music, as well as a last-minute “nativity walkthrough,” which was basically a whole bunch of families from the parish who carried the baby Jesus around the church, reciting short passages from the bible as they passed the doll onto the next group, and finally placing him upon the manger display in the front of the church. I think it sounds stranger than it actually was, but I’m not sure how else to describe it! Afterwards, we took a drive into Tustin, where, Kris had found out, they have a holiday decoration display contest every year. This was a GREAT way to continue my family’s Christmas Eve tradition of driving around looking at holiday lights and decorations. Kris had printed up a small map of the area with the greatest concentration of holiday displays - because you can login and post that your house has lights - so we found that area and drove around. Let me just say - these people go ALL out! Some of them empty their garages for a whole big display of Christmas villages and train sets. Other people did a whole computer coordinated music, light, and anamitronics show, while everyone else seemed to either A) not bother or B) buy the same giant blow-up snowglobe things and NOEL signs with penguins from Costco that everyone else did. It was still a lot of fun, but also kinda strange since the temperature was pretty mild (Kris and I laughed after mass when someone outside said “It’s so cold!”) - at one point we just parked the car so we could get up and personal with some of the more outstanding displays. I think the funniest part was that a lot of people had gotten that cotton stuffing stuff and staked it into their front yard to make it look like it had snowed! Ha! Snow in Southern California!

We tried to cap off the drive home with some holiday Starbucks, but it was closed (even though all the lights were on!), so we made our way back for some hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. I had to make a small detour to look in on my friends’ cats while they were away in Utah, and while I was gone Santa came! Kris had brought down all his presents and more that he’d been hiding all December, and there were two stockings hung by the chimney….I mean TV. With our tree lit and cocoa in hand, we sat and watched another short Rankin & Bass “animated” classic Christmas movie before heading off to bed.

On Christmas morning we slept in as long as we could before getting up to start the turkey prep, same as we did on Thanksgiving. As soon as we finished that, we got down to some gift exchanging! We took some pictures, and then gave the families a call. The mystery of where the “other” Tupperware had come from was solved (it didn’t come with any shipping info or notice), and we got to share the holiday in a small part with our families. The only thing we were missing was a white Christmas - the weather out here that day was so mild and warm it seemed like it was almost Christmas in July!

Before we knew it, it was time to finish prepping the rest of the food - green bean and sweet potatoes - and Jason and Andrea had arrived with salad, rolls, and potato gratin. The turkey was done by this point, but I still had to make the gravy, so we enjoyed some wine with our friends and then proceeded to dig in. After dinner we played a game of Triominos - a childhood favorite of mine that I’d played with my Grandma and Grandpa. We cleaned up dinner, exchanging leftovers, and then enjoyed a dessert of apple pie and a variety of Christmas cookies, all of which we’d received from our families from back east.

A week later, we decided as a last minute plan to have Jason and Andrea over again. We all decided it would be best to have a small thing - get together after dinner and possibly celebrate before midnight. However, we got all involved with another round of Triominos, and a card game that they’d brought that roughly translated as “Not for Oxen” and before we knew it was five minutes til midnight. So we turned on the tv, did the countdown, kissed our respective spouses, popped the champagne, and toasted the New Year! We played another round of the card game, finished the bottle of champagne, and said good night. It was a great way to finish and start the year.